In August 2013, the CBESS Team began the final push to collect data for the Summer Field Campaign in Morecambe Bay and the Essex Marshes. Conditions were very different to winter with fieldworkers suffering sunburn and dehydration, compared to suspected frost bite!

Staff and students (*) from Queen’s University Belfast spent a muddy, but productive, four weeks in Morecambe Bay and the Essex marshes as part of the CBESS 2013 summer campaign.

Dr John Bothwell on the mud in the Essex Marshes

We deployed double Fyke nets for 24 hours at each quadrat, using these nets to collect meiofauna and floating seaweeds, and also collected quadrat sediment cores, giving us a good overview of meiofaunal species richness. Additional deployments of seine and push nets were carried out to supplement the Fyke net catches and improve the baseline for trophic web analysis.

Our summer Fyke net catches were much higher than in winter, with Morecambe Bay yielding large numbers of flounder and brown wracks, and Essex yielding very high numbers of crabs and the green sea lettuces (Ulva spp.); many less common species (e.g. jellyfish, eels, Crangon) were also observed at each site. All collected net samples have been preserved in formaldehyde and will be processed over the autumn for the stable isotope analysis that will allow us to build meiofaunal trophic webs.

We have also begun the hire process for our ecoinformatic Post-Doctoral Research Assistant, and expect to appoint towards the end of Nov 2013.

As part of the fieldwork campaigns, The University of St Andrews has been measuring the community metabolism of salt marsh and mudflat areas, i.e. the CO2 fluxes due to either primary production or respiration of the mud or marsh and everything living in and on it.

The Saltmarsh App developed by CBESS is now available to download for Apple and Adroid.

Marine scientists are appealing to citizen scientists to collect information about Britain’s saltmarshes with a new mobile phone app.

Using the FREE Saltmarsh App individuals can identify the specialised plants and wildlife found on saltmarshes and carry out an interactive plant and soil survey.

The information will form the basis of a survey to estimate the stored carbon in the saltmarsh soil and show how, by capturing carbon and reducing the concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the marsh is helping to limit climate change.

The Saltmarsh App was developed as a cooperation between Bangor and St Andrews Universities, with the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. Every marsh survey uploaded will help the scientists learn more about UK saltmarsh soils and how they are helping fight climate change. The website – www.saltmarshapp.com – allows users to track theirs and other citizen scientists’ results, and to learn more about the science.

The Saltmarsh App The website for The Saltmarsh App Do you enjoy spending time outside and exploring the coast of England and Wales? Have you ever explored a salt marsh? Saltmarshes are grassland fiel...